Chapter Text
Crowley was Dagon’s favorite tempter; a low bar to get over, but he cleared it stylishly enough. He did good work, his reports were succinct and witty, he was always the first to accept (and often the first to suggest) innovations that made her life easier, and his demeanor toward her always had a comfortable fear: respect ratio. That didn’t mean she trusted him, because she was not an idiot, but it did mean that she supported the long leash Satan had put him on, as a general rule, and remembered to use his new name about half the time. It also meant that, when the Files showed her a pattern with him in it, she checked it out, personally. She could count on her investigators to deal with the common-or-garden subterfuges of the common-or-garden demonic agent, but the Serpent of Eden, not so much. Besides, the odds were good she’d get some fun out of it, and a demon in her position of responsibility needed as much fun as she could get.
After her day trip to London, she settled back into her accustomed place, in the Hall of Records, at the big desk with all the pigeonholes, and the pneumatic tubes, and the chair that rolled, and the speaking tube, permanently anchored at her end, that could manifest at the ear of any being in Hell in order to convey information and/or her will. The space was dank, and smelly, and absolutely hers, lit by pale phosphorescence that gave her minions eyestrain. Even Beelzebub didn’t annoy her in here as she read reports, and correlated facts, and tracked numbers, and waited to see how Crowley’s reports changed in response to her visit, because she knew she’d put the wind up him good and hard, and she knew he’d been in a hurry to get her out of Soho, and his response was sure to be interesting.
So she was fascinated when his reports began to come in more regularly, but were otherwise unaltered. Compliance reports, a quick rundown of the way evil influences in the British government seeped out to poison other locations, detailed expositions on fashions and trends and technology (he reveled in his Sloth and Vanity so much!), at least one new practical joke or annoying catchphrase or some such per report, and that damn lazy close: AHS instead of All Hail Satan, followed by the most slapdash abbreviation of a sigil anyone in Hell had ever been allowed to get away with. Once in awhile he’d mention his local adversary in a breezy and impersonal way, and he never mentioned the experiment she’d observed in operation, at all.
Perhaps she hadn’t scared him as much as she’d thought?
At any given time, Dagon had a dozen nascent investigations in hand, and she took her time about them. Due to the way British influence had spread around the world, Crowley had the potential to overlap with about half her current batch; but a close perusal didn’t turn up anything remotely like conspiracy. So she pulled a bunch of folders on innocuous minor tempters who’d been on assignments within or near his sphere of influence, not sure what she was looking for.
If you knew what you looked for you were all too likely to overlook what you needed to see, so she opened her mind up and read mountains of reports from demons who would normally be too petty for her eyes, which was how the name “Mr. Fell” came to her notice. She pulled more files, scanning for the name, and yes, every single demon banished from Britain in the time period checked had been banished by an angel who introduced himself as Mr. Fell, which was weird all on its own. What kind of angel introduced himself? And Fell? Bad taste, that. She liked it.
Mr. Fell always led by asking after Crowley. Where he was; did he know the demon in question was in town; what nefarious scheme of Crowley’s was this demon assisting with? The demon writing the report always insisted that he’d had no contact with Crowley, didn’t know Crowley was in whatever provincial community the encounter had occurred in, would never dream of doing anything to cross the Serpent of Eden. Banishment always followed hard on the heels of Mr. Fell being satisfied of the truth of these statements.
So this Mr. Fell must be the “Mr. Fusswings” who provided the testing environment for Crowley’s experiments; his local adversary. Something was off about that, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
When in doubt, get more files out. She waded back through all the reports related to Britain since Crowley’d asked for and received a permanent assignment there in the wake of the anti-Heaven operation in the North Sea at the end of 18th century. It was a small enough area for a pinioned demon to manage effectively, and nobody’d found it odd that he’d wanted to settle down after all the running around he’d done gathering intelligence for that endeavor. He’d missed the operation, itself, having - in his own words - “tripped over” an unnamed angel on his way to participate and gotten into a protracted, ultimately victorious, scrap to prevent the angel from warning the Host.
An unnamed angel. Huh.
That didn’t necessarily mean anything. “All fights are boring,” Crowley’d told her once. All the same, when most demons beat up an angel, they were pretty forthcoming about whose fundament they’d kicked. She remembered Crowley turning up, drenched and shaky and chipper, with a trophy feather behind his ear, as the forces of Hell retreated from what had turned out to be a trap. “Guess I didn’t need to fight that one so hard,” he’d said. “Seeing they already knew all about it. Which was more’n I did, to tell the truth. Anybody going to explain to me what all that was about?”
Dagon clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, certain that she’d see this pattern much more clearly, if Crowley were more forthcoming about his various experiments. She’d mostly been looking to make him sweat when she’d said that place where his magic circle of evil met up with the opposing one looked like a “collaboration,” but -
But she wanted a look at this Mr. Fell.
When she was sure she’d learned everything the files would tell her on the matter, and tidied everything away, and closed a couple of other, less interesting investigations by recommending them to Beelzebub for discipline, and cleared her in-box, she logged her intention to head upstairs and left before anyone could stop her. Once topside, she modeled her clothing on Crowley’s fashion reports (bustles had replaced crinolines, lines were more vertical, fewer bonnets and more hats), and hailed a cab for Soho.
The junction of the demonic and angelic workings felt much the same as the cab jolted over it, not that she could examine anything in that moment. Dagon wasn’t sure how much earth-based time had passed since her last visit, or how significant it was in terms of how a slow but not stupid angel might work, but she would have expected Crowley to have made some progress on blocking the backwash after their conversation, and as far as she could tell, he hadn’t. Nor had the angel gained on him, though; and Soho didn’t seem to have benefited much from the angelic working: crowded, noisy, as full of smells as Hell, and on this particular cold and rainy day, at least, not much brighter. Still, something about the area made her skin ache and her teeth itch; some kind of vital energy in the air, too much color, too much movement. Too many smiles. Nausea set in, but at least part of that was the motion of the vehicle.
Dagon stopped the cab with a jerk of her chin that broke the horse’s leg. The beast screamed and thrashed amusingly, the cabbie cursed, traffic crashed around them, and humans gathered to gape and shout advice, in defiance of the freezing rain. Dagon, climbing down from the cab, turned her face up for a moment, letting the jaws of her jaunty hat refresh themselves, before turning and wading across the currents of the angelic working to find its center.
She tracked it to the corner of two busy streets, a shabby building with many-paned windows shining a glory of soft, warm light out into the world and turning sleet into drops of gold. People exited on her approach, laughing as they put up umbrellas, scurrying off in all directions exuding a robust good cheer that could not possibly derive from their mundane surroundings. Dagon hauled her skirts through tpuddles and traffic, up the steps, and inside, striding confidently to the center of the room, and of the angelic working, before the cheery bell above the door stopped tinkling.
“Good evening, madam,” said an inconsequential little man, turning over a sign hanging in the window and twisting a small device on the door. She felt something snap into place.
Dagon took a moment to turn in a circle on the round rug, her bustle following her with a few seconds’ delay, and survey the bookshop/angel’s lair she’d charged into. No humans. Lots of shelves; lots of dust; various shabby furnishings; a sales counter; colorful new books in the front giving way to dingy older ones toward the back; a spiral stair to more books; a skylight holding back the insistent knocking of the weather; a little man who looked less inconsequential, surrounded as he was now by an aura so pure and warm it stung despite its low power level; and the sweetest terror she had ever tasted. She grinned toothily. “Good evening, Mr. Fell.”
The angel returned a meek, shopkeepery smile. “You appear to have the advantage of me, Miss -?”
“Terious.” Dagon laughed at his expression as he sidled along the wall of the shop, as well as he could for all the shelves and books in the way. “I’ll be warning future operatives about that trick of yours. I don’t think you’ll be collecting many more names that way.”
The smile fluttered around his mouth. “I’m always astonished when it works, honestly. But you mustn’t be too hard on any demons who forget your wise instructions on the topic in the future. When you’re living among humans, their manners and conventions become habits, and habits are so hard to shake. Are you in town long, Miss Terious?”
“That’s hardly your concern.”
“On, on the contrary.” He reached the sales counter and stood behind it, as if it would provide any noticeable protection when she struck. Unlike the walls of the shop, it did not thrum with the power of activated wards. Presumably he had weapons behind it. If he kept holy water on hand, this could get nasty fast, but she wasn’t worried, not with that terror in the air, not with his low power level, not as long as she kept a bit of distance between them. Those were not the shoulders of an angel accustomed to lobbing holy water around. “I am very concerned any time a new demon ventures into London; far more so, when she enters my shop. Does Mr. Crowley know you’re here?”
“Oh, he’ll come if I call him, you needn’t worry about that.” Dagon surveyed the wards on the walls with a critical eye. He’d compensated for his lack of miraculous power by braiding them into intertwining layers that strengthened each other. “Not that he’ll be able to get in right away, by the look of it. You know your stuff on the protection front, I’ll give you that. Too bad for you I’m on the wrong side of your shields.”
“How so? My charges are out there. You are in here.” No wonder Crowley’d dubbed him “Mr. Fusswings.” He sounded as prim as a schoolmaster; and looked it, too, as he removed his coat and folded it on top of the counter.
“So all this delicious fear is for your charges, is it?” She let her grin widen, showed a few more teeth. “It hasn’t dawned on you that I’m a teensy bit more dangerous than Crowley?”
His voice went shrill and his face did marvelous things as his hands fumbled with his cufflinks. “All the more reason for me to, to, to keep you away from my charges.”
“Relax, Mr. Fell. I’m not interested in humans right now.”
“N-no?” He started rolling up his sleeves, preparing for a fight he hadn’t a hope on earth of winning.
“No, I have a bit more of a scholarly interest here.”
His face cleared, and his voice changed significantly. “Oh! Are you here to look at the books? Why on earth didn’t you say so! Is there a particular work you’re interested in?”
Dagon blinked, more surprised than she’d been since - all right, this wasn’t on the level of the surprise she’d felt at Falling, but it was right up there with the surprise of Crawly’s success with the apple. It was, in fact, very close to the sensation she got whenever Crowley pulled off one of his innovations: delighted relief from the predictability of existence that had set in after the first thousand years of reading and organizing reports. “Are you...are you offering to sell me a book?”
“Well, that depends. If you want something current, a novel, or poetry, or something of scientific interest, I’ll be happy to help you, of course.”
“You will?” Of course?
“This is a bookshop, madam. You are a member of the general public, regardless of your professional affiliations. It’s my business to sell you books, should I have any for sale which you wish to purchase.” He started on his second sleeve. “I do, however, have an extensive library of my own, which is not for sale, and if you are interested in that, I’m afraid I would be reluctant to let you peruse its contents, in the, in the circumstances.”
“The circumstance that I’m a major demon and you’re a minor angel?”
“Exactly, yes.” He smiled and nodded; a nervous smile, and his terror levels had not diminished. He wanted her out of his shop and his city. But he apparently didn’t see any need to be rude about it, and blessed if he didn’t also want to sell her a book!
The pattern Dagon had been trying to see started coming together. “So. Has Crowley ever bought a book from you?”
“Oh! Yes, yes, many times. Most recently, um, he came in this spring, to buy The Picture of Dorian Gray. I’m not positive he reads anything he buys, mind, but I certainly hope he read that one. It’s by a, a particular friend of mine, you see, and I think the themes and subject matter could be of special interest to, to someone of his and your, er, profession. It’s about temptation, and corruption, and beauty, and -” He fumbled underneath the counter without looking down. “I still have several copies if you’d -“
“I’m not interested in buying a book,” snapped Dagon, feeling glorious satisfaction as the pattern clicked into place at last. “Stop feeling around for your weapon and put your hands on the counter, please.” Please? Where did that come from?
Obediently, he placed two plump, pale hands between his cash box and a tray of miscellaneous desk implements. “I assure you, I have no desire to fight. I don’t like fighting.”
“Also, you would lose.” If she were to pick him up and squeeze him, what sound would come out? A huffy “Excuse me?” An indignant “Unhand me, if you please, Madam Fiend?”
“Losing is, is a matter of definition, though, isn’t it?”
Dagon chuckled. “Does that sort of argument work on Crowley?”
He licked his lips. “Poss, possibly. Sometimes. We don’t actually speak that often. I don’t know if you know Crowley very well -“
“Very well indeed. And I think you’ll find me a different kettle of fish from him, entirely, if you try chopping logic with me in a way that would distract him. Tell me about these interlocking magical thingummybobs you two have going.”
“That’s purely self defense on my part! He’s the one who went pushing the lines! If he’d only set it up in Mayfair I might not have had to notice, but no, he had to bleed into Soho! I mean, obviously, the people in Mayfair are my charges, too, but they have so many advantages and Soho is so vulnerable and and he knows that this is my par, particular territory and if he thinks I’m going to stand for that sort of thing just because I’m not, not inclined to get smitey and so on in a populated area, he, he, he can think again!” His voice squeaked at the end of this impassioned speech, as he seized a paperknife and flourished it in the most unwarlike way possible.
Dagon couldn’t help it; she threw back her head, opened her jaws to their full width, and laughed with her whole body. The contrast of his indignation with his terror and his determination with the sheer soft inadequacy of his corporation was simply too ridiculous. Normally angels made her want to rip their heads off, but this one she wanted to nibble around the edges as he struggled futilely, and watch his reaction -
The burning-sweet smell of angelic ichor cut through the scent of terror. She swallowed her merriment as he finished carving a sigil into one forearm - why did that sigil look familiar? As she stepped forward with a warning growl, he whirled to slam the cut into the wards on the wall behind the sales counter.
The pressure change in the room made her ears pop. What the -?
Glowing golden ichor dripped down from her own sigil on the wall, the reverse of the wound on his arm, and activated a level of working she hadn’t noticed before. “Begone, Dagon,” said Mr. Fell. “The shop is closed.”
The rug parted beneath her feet as she was sucked down, down, down, through the foundation (it burned), through the layers of muck and rock and groundwater beneath London, till she dropped into her own office in Hell, directly on her bustle in her rolling chair at her desk with all the pigeonholes, and the pneumatic tubes, and the speaking tube. A patter of loose mud dropped around her, before the ceiling sealed itself. All activity in the office ceased, every eye upon her.
Dagon removed her hat and shook the mud off. “What are you staring at?” She demanded. “Back to work.” She picked up the stack of folders she’d had out for the Crowley investigation, and shoved them at the nearest clerk, whose arachnid features made her a particularly useful person in the stacks. “Here, I’m finished with these.”
The demon seized them in two of her arms and scurried away. The bustle of filing, stamping, spindling, folding, and mutilating resumed around her as Dagon sat at her desk, staring at the influx of paperwork since her departure, and sorted through her reactions. That had been - had been -
That had been something else, was what that had been!
If anyone knew that a terrified little Guardian Angel had figured out who she was (based on what? How had she given herself away?) and knew her sigil well enough to carve it in reverse into his own flesh and moreover used it to banish her, that would be humiliating and she would be fearsomely angry.
But nobody knew that, except her, and Mr. Fell. She had solved her mystery, in spades. And - Satan help her - the look on his face? In what should have been a moment of gloating triumph? That what is the matter with me this won’t work I’m about to discorporate horribly expression? That was the funniest thing she’d seen in millennia. It was worth getting banished, to have seen it! And the banishment hadn't even hurt!
Once her sputtering giggles died down and she had her composure back, she picked up her pen and slid a pad of official stationery into the center of her blotter.
Dear Mr. Fell:
Well done, you absurd little heavenly lickspittle. Tell anyone and I won’t leave one stone in Soho atop another, and don’t think I won’t find out. Fair’s fair, though; you told me exactly what I need to know, so think about that whenever you congratulate yourself.
Sincerely,
Miss Terious
She folded it, stamped, it, passed her hand over it, and sent it on its way to the sales counter of the holiest bookshop in Europe, if not all of earth.
Her next missive took longer to compose, and was written in triplicate:
To: Crowley, Serpent of Eden
From: Dagon, Lord of the Files
Re: London experiments
You could have saved me some trouble if you’d told me how much fun your Mr. Fusswings is to poke at! As it is I had to make a separate trip at great personal inconvenience. He was pantswettingly scared - and that is some high-class terror - but he still tried to sell me a book! It’s the most amusement I’ve had in ages. It must be dreary for you, stuck up there with no one to practice your cleverness on, for decades on end, so I don’t blame you for finding excuses to pit yourself against his itty-bitty nimble wits, or for keeping him from anybody else’s notice. Some of our less resourceful brethren would tear him to pieces in moments, and waste him. I wouldn’t deprive you of your toy for worlds.
But - you’ve gotten careless. While you’re using him to test your system, he’s learning from you. Did you know those wards in his shop can double as a banishing circle? And he’s a good deal too knowledgeable about Hell’s personnel. I don’t think he wants to shut down the contamination you’re feeding into his working. I think it’s got more information in it than you’ve realized. Smash both systems, and the next time you want to conduct an experiment on that scale, submit a proposal first so it can have proper oversight. You can keep teasing him, and by all means lob ideas at him to see if they stick, but be more careful!
Next time you buy a book, give me a head’s up. Maybe I’ll go with you. We could make him sweat rainbows, between us.
Beelz didn’t need to know about any of this, not with everything handled. One copy to Crowley, one in his file, and one down a pneumatic tube to the Abyss proper, where a certain class of damned soul would circulate and classify and file and refile it forever, along with all the other documents Hell generated in a day. They’d get a coffee break on the day they got caught up.
And finally:
To: All Field Personnel
From: Dagon, Lord of the Files
Re: Name Sharing
It has come to my attention that certain tempters, when encountering an angel in the field in circumstances that, among humans, call for introductions, are telling said angels their real names, making them easier to banish.
This is stupid. Stop it. Or else.
That done, she picked up the next stack of reports. Oh, joy, Hastur was on top. All his reports read exactly the same, and he hadn’t the personal or political resources to get up to anything, but technically he was a Duke so she was stuck reading it.
Time passed the way time tended to pass in Hell, and she was well settled back into her routine when a report came in wrapped around a book. Dagon raised her eyebrows and examined, first the nearly-plain cream paper wrapper, then the blue boards and brown leather underneath, and finally the contents. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde - why did that sound familiar? She set it aside and looked at the report.
Crowley’s uneven hand - half printing, half cursive - ran through the usual subjects and only addressed the enclosure toward the end:
As requested, the experiment has been dismantled. I think you’re overreacting, but what’s the point of being the boss if you can’t overreact when you want to? Don’t blame me if the numbers go down. If Mr. Fusswings knows too much about Hell he didn’t learn it from me. More likely that moldering book collection he has in the back. Of course I know his wards are also good for banishing! It’s all right as long as you don’t let him lock the door on you.
Though you’re always welcome, I don’t buy books often, only to spook Mr. Fusswings once in awhile, and when I do, I’d rather not carry an elephant gun to hunt grouse, if it’s all the same to you. I’m enclosing the last one I picked up from him, on the off chance you’d like it and so sometime I can tell him I sent a book one of his friends wrote to Hell. That should put him in a tizzy. Prudery alert: 500 words got cut as “immoral” from the magazine release. Bet you can’t guess which ones. I’m so proud of modern morality, all that straining at gnats and swallowing camels.
That was that, then. When you came right down to it, Crowley would always be a low-risk demon because he had no political drive. You could rely on him, if you knew how to manage him. Feed him a few commendations, don’t be too strict on his hours, allow him his amusements, he’d perform. Yank on his chain often enough to remind him he wasn’t his own master and that stepping out of line had penalties, he’d concentrate. If she didn’t do anything rude like breaking his toy angel, he’d probably stay on task for another century or so, now. She stamped the report and put it into the pneumatic tube for the personnel files.
More reports awaited; but the book still lay in the middle of the blotter. No one had ever enclosed anything unrequested in a report before. Was it a - bribe? A present? What, exactly, about this thing (or about her?) had made first Mr. Fell and now Crowley think that she might like it? Why, for that matter, did either of them care if she liked anything? As puzzles went, it was a small one, and not work-relevant; but the next report in the stack was Hastur’s again and dear Satan, those were boring!
She picked the book up, turning it over and over in her hands. The dust jacket felt smooth and cool and fragile. The smell of tobacco and new paper freshened the thick, humid air for a few inches. She had never read a book, or a poem, or anything at all for pleasure.
She was the boss, and could solve small, work-irrelevant puzzles if she wanted to.
Dagon opened The Picture of Dorian Gray, and began to read.